For The Observer, I’ve written about growing up under the shadow of Section 28, bi erasure, and the role of the Bishopsgate Institute’s archive informing new books on LGBT+ history that offer resistance and lessons in our own increasingly intolerant times
observer.co.uk/style/featur...
An underrated advantage of reading paper books is getting your steps in by walking to the library
Blasphemy
I was just on Bible Gateway for a bit of research and I swear this is the only site I've been on lately that doesn't have a built-in AI assistant. Don't want it hallucinating random thoughts and claiming it's the Word of God, that could go badly wrong.
Caroline Green runs a great one of these in the City St George's short course programme (worked for me as a non-fiction writer, not too basic).
There were Christian activists trying to sue last year: it's ongoing.
The 'lanyard class' they're bothered about are the ones with Pride lanyards
Right - so that's not it! I mean, there's a marginal issue of some struggling institutions offering places on main degrees when the students would be better off in Foundation, but the answer to that is not to pull student loans.
Lots of universities admit students with BTecs only. I looked up Birmingham and for History they require an A Level in addition to the BTec. I assume this is where he's coming from.
I'm not sure it's possible to make it perfectly ethical but for sure it could do better
Seems like there's a gap in the market for a premium AI which paid some compensation for its training (like a public lending right) and promised no partnerships with the arms industry. Like, AI for the organic Waitrose shopper.
Thank you!
I was hoping I'd just be able to drop in a footnote to someone else's work to explain what was up with the guns in the Medici court records. But no, still no-one had written that book, so I decided to do it myself. And a decade plus on, here it finally is. (And sadly still rather topical.)
I think historians' decisions are often shaped by contemporary events, and that was certainly the case for me here. I chose a different theme for my PhD work, but came back to firearms when I was researching the court of Alessandro de' Medici for a later book.
And the backdrop to that was first, that there'd recently been a debate in the UK on the banning of handguns following the mass shooting a Dunblane Primary School (coming up for its 30th anniversary). I'd gone to high school in the nearby town of Stirling, so that event was pretty close to home.
I wrote an essay on guns in 2002, following a class on visual culture where I'd been talking about the weapons that you could spot in the background of religious paintings.
So, one question I often get is why I decided to write a book about guns, and the answer goes back more than two decades to the beginning of this millennium when I was doing my MA.
It's well-established that some groups of people are more willing to put themselves forward even if they don't meet stated criteria, so being clear on this matters.
If the real criterion is (as I suspect) potential, then the BA should say so.
Because I regularly see these going to people who are great researchers and certainly have excellent potential on the public communication front but are not yet at the stage of 'distinction'.
I see the BA mid-career fellowship results are out, which reminds me to post that I wish they'd be more transparent about how they assess the criterion that candidates "have achieved distinction as an excellent communicator and ‘champion’ in their field".
While this is in the news, what's a good read on the economy of Dubai and in particular the reliance on forced labour?
Even just on the vibes bit, are we absolutely sure the squeezed middle earners aren't worried about who's going to staff mum's care home?
nice to have the option for the future though
ten days too late for my September research trip, how irritating
Further thoughts:
In general, if you're initiating a partnership to deliver some type of activity then it's easier to ask the partner up-front to build in the type of evaluation you will need (all the more so if you're bringing money to that partnership). None of that applies in the cases mentioned here.
Even less are they about 'have we changed people's actions', which I am often told is the gold standard for impact.
The evaluations that commercial organisations conduct are generally around sales and numbers, not 'have we changed people's understanding', so are less useful in conveying depth of impact...
For example, asking an individual freelancer to write a detailed testimonial of your impact to a specific brief is quite a burden on that individual (especially given that it's not something universities can pay for)...
